A proposal for a new SSK

[M'er Forever]

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[M'er Forever]

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[ImClueless]

More SSK-proposal renderings to come in response to a couple of requests. My rendering engine (in AutoCAD 2008) takes a long time to do each render (done at 2560x1440), and that's after I spend a considerable amount of time tweaking the material and light properties to get the most photorealistic result I can, so bear with me on this...

Cant wait to see these.

[M'er Forever]

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[Findecanor]

Cool, even lighting with no bleed under and around the keys and no glaring hotspots.

What if you could put a LED under a transparent rocker and make the inner slider of a translucent plastic? Then the light would flow through the central shaft, not bleeding out of it.

Legends would have to be centred, and wide text legends would be a bit difficult. If you use a two-piece keycap (slider, cap), then the translucent bottom could have a angled surface above the shaft as a mirror to distribute the light over an elongated surface area. Similarly on the keycaps on the numeric row, that are split in top and bottom.

[M'er Forever]

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[Parak]

Great minds must think alike... Do these look a bit familiar?

There are some that nfc designed on my request over at shapeways - those look like them :p

But, those are... different than simply captive flippies. They are uhm.. designed to take a pcb internally. Kinda of a long explanation there

I think regular capsense will be quite feasible with proper pcb design, but the capsense controller needs to be stable and finalized and stuff. I'm honestly a big fan of the straight pcb approach - it's extremely robust, will last forever due to the solder mask covering the pads, etc. Membranes will most likely cost less to make though, will be easier to mount, and can be prototyped much simpler since there's still a number of barriers to capsense.

I wouldn't worry about patent stuff - I'm only talking about some of my ideas because there's a ton of prior art for them - this isn't anything new, just slightly modified if anything..

[M'er Forever]

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[Parak]

As far as the PCB-based capsense approach is concerned, I don't know how one could bend it into the proper curvature without inducing a good deal of stress in the material if conventional rigid PCB laminate were used (although may be possible with very thin laminate) -- certainly not as easy as bending a membrane "sandwich". For a single-layer PCB approach rather than a multilayer membrane, Kapton film with etched copper foil would be both easily bendable and solderable if low-temp solder is used and solder times are kept brief to prevent delamination of the foil; if that's what you had in mind, I agree it would work nicely.

Easy - just do it like IBM did it. Use a regular pcb... that's half as thick. Regular pcbs being 1.6mm, IBM used 0.8. That's a very standard thickness that usually costs the same as a 1.6mm. Quite easily bendable into the curvature that they used when secured from the center using some pegs and such.

[M'er Forever]

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[Parak]

Although I have some F's, I've never disassembled any of them; but I agree that thin PCB laminate is somewhat bendable. I spent about 28 years doing electromechanical design, with much of it being PCB layouts, so I am quite familiar with 0.031" (0.8mm) laminate. I just prefer designs wherein nothing is stressed, thus my interest in using a Kapton flex circuit. But then there could be issues with capacitance between the capsense pads on Kapton and the steel backplate which could "swamp out" minor capacitance changes upon switch actuation. I need to read up more on what's already been tried...

The main reason the rivets pop on M's IMO is that they are constantly tugged-at by the barrel frame trying to pop back into its flat as-molded shape, so I'm trying to avoid similar issues in this design. However, I will keep this in mind as I go further with the internal details. Thanks for your input!

The IBM capsense design is extremely robust - there's a reason why they're still working just about perfectly after 30+ years. The pcb is hardly stressed - you really must take apart an F to see how they're constructed, how the barrels look inside, flippies, how it all fits together, etc. The only issue that everyone has had with the design is the foam spacing between the barrels and the front plate. You see, even though the barrels are curved as well, they still don't line up or contact well with the pcb, and so require a spacer to properly lie flush against the pcb and have no wobble, in the way of foam. Said foam has often deteriorated over the years into a flaky and/or sticky mess, leading to it having to be replaced. In a new design, one would either need to precisely make everything fit together so that the barrel issues are avoided, use some sort of foam/rubber as well, or make the design flat. I actually tend to lean towards the last one, since that makes a lot of things much simpler...

[gh_pp]

Black casing with white on black keycaps could be nice if you wanted to render that.

Here you go, Compgeke; now on to an Industrial-grey version...

wow the black version looks unreal (it is, lol)
very nice. for me personally, thin bezel is very desirable for TKL. also win key is very very useful (basically with autohotkey, you get a tons of macro buttons for everyday tasks, not to mention builtin shortcut like win+e win+l, etc)

[M'er Forever]

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[dorkvader]

I had looked into the feasability of a kapton / copper PCB design, and the main issue I ran into was that I worried greatly about the copper delaminating from the kapton substrate. The hammer "hits" aren't very "hard" but many materials will fail after repeated light hits far below their ultimate strength. This is one reason why designing for vibrations is very important.

About the thin normal PCB and bending: I think this is the better option, not just because "IBM used it". Having removed said PCBs from their housings several times, I can attest to their strength. They are bent, but still within design specifications. I tried to bend one further to see how far it would go before failure, and the IBM radius of curvature is significantly larger than the smallest before failure.

I understand that minimizing stress and strain in the design is important, but you must also realize that there are materials and processes that will endure under some stress. You just have to do some testing and design work for them.

I would expect a thin "normal" PCB that's bent and stressed to last far far longer than a kapton / copper one. When I was poking around online for quotes, this was mentioned to me as well, and after I thought about it, I dropped the idea.

I don't have an AT model F, but the similarly-sized XT KB is pretty simple to take apart and reconstruct. It's the 122 and 104 "unsaver" sizes that really present a problem. I would recommend that you examine an F assembly firsthand to get a good understanding about the internals, which really are quite different than those of an M.

This looks very good, similar to the output my roommate (an industrial design major) would give me. We used to spend long hours with him coming up with new ideas and I commenting on the relative feasibility of producing them. We both learned a lot from those times.

Now I'll go back to sharpening my punch in preparation for trying a third replacement mat material so I can reassemble and use my 122 again.

[Game Theory]

For a mat material I used silicone from Grainger, and also got some neoprene but decided on the silicone due to the lack of smell. I punches the barrel circle and the nub that stick out to the bottom right as two separate punches. Seems to work fine. I thought about using the foam

[M'er Forever]

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[Muirium]

I assume the flip plates strike the foam mat instead of the PCB sense pads directly, like the soft mat inside a Model M. Or otherwise cap sense would be superfluous. But I haven't Dorkvader's direct experience.

Also, the plastic rivets don't seem to take much or any strain in a Model M. When you take apart the layer sandwich, the barrel plate remains curved quite independently. I had a Model M open for about a month recently, waiting on parts for a bolt mod. The metal backplate and the barrel plate were made to that specific curve. Only the floppy layers of the mat and membrane naturally lie flat.

Windows keys, or the trio of Control, Option and Command, in my case, are definitely something I would want.

[M'er Forever]

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[webwit]

Not bad. The trick to Industrial Gray is to put a touch of olive green in it.

[M'er Forever]

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[M'er Forever]

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[Daemon Raccoon]

Needs the NumLock function of the original. Shift+Scroll Lock and the 789UIOJKLM./-= (7894561230./-+) keys.

[M'er Forever]

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